The
front door opens into a lumber-cluttered passage circumambulating the
incompletely removed remains of the tower’s huge delivery-hopper: a
three-sided room-within-a-room, now a snug office.Through a balustraded square of missing ceiling can be seen the final
roof, its steel-grid centered on the eye of a small dome (faint echo of the Pazzi
Chapel !).

To
reach the upper floor from this enclosed space one must re-thread the peripheral passage: past a small
door to the north Attic; a curtained wc and wash-basin; the apt’s front-door;
a pair of pillar-sized flues (painted as ‘fire’ and ‘water’) that pass
through floor and ceiling (cut-off in the room above to support a desk), and - guided by a clean-cuffed and suited pointing printed hand - find the ninth stair
in a cluttered corner. Up and with relief one emerges at last into the tower’s
topmost clear [1] (though not quite simple) space.

The
room is as if zoned into four cross-related squares. One enters a ‘¼’ that
is empty but for bare and polished boards - its diagonal-opposite ¼ inverts the
form: a missing floor thinly fenced. On one’s left is a ¼ for sleep and
waking: a dressing-table and a huge bed - its diagonal ¼ is for eating and
talking: a dining-table framed like a stage-set, dramatically top-lit like a
Baroque ‘last-supper’.

High-up
and isolated with few and small windows the room feels strangely ‘sealed and
suspended’. However such windows as there are - two in situ and two made - is
each unique in itself and in its mode of conveyancing [2]:

The
plastic roof-domes (bought from a salvage firm) were mounted by Mark over the
remains of two flue outlets that projected through the roof, their thin metal
snipped around their edge and squeezed inside the smaller diameter of the domes,
wired and plastic-sealed - one is now opaqued, the other (above the table) a
translucent circle that generalises the condition of the sky: a bright sun-lamp,
pearly-moon, or black disc.

The
tiny (in situ) steel-framed square window high on the SW wall shows, if one
climbs to it, the whole length of the Silo’s roof walled at its end by the New
Silo tower. From one place in the room the tower’s square top exactly occupies
the window’s centre: a dull beige and pink geometric picture glowing in the
dark wall like a tv, the image shifting on the square in perspective relation to
ones movements in the room (a primitive mechanical prototype for an electronic
LCD ‘painting’).

From the balustrade
around the floor’s missing quarter, on the Ij-side of the lower room a (in
situ) porthole window displays (in counterpoise to the ceiling-disc of sky) a
disc of Ij water: green and rippled, churned with white wind-flecks, sunlit with
passing shadows...in all its states it seems as if the opening below one - like
a telescope directed downwards at the surface - samples the moment’s water and
presents it flat inside the lens-like frame.

The last was made by Klaas: a ‘cinema-scope’
window positioned as the high bed’s magic head-board displaying a film-like
cut of moving traffic on the Ij bisecting ferry-passings from the Havens, upon a
constant background of waters divided like a model by green narrow dykes.

FOOT-NOTE:

Mark
had cleared Level 8 of a 'big machine' and ducting that passed through the
room and roof to vent used air from the tower's dryers.

The
Silo’s hand-made and industrial windows are often unfamiliar in placing or
in shape: thus they remain in ones attention with the view, displaying it in
relation to themselves [ Ref: NOTE
1: Corb- Villa Savoye: sun- terrace
].

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L): ENTRY SPACE
(pic 6-94
/ to WWN)

The
apt 'front door' and entry space. Encumbered with stacked boards like
complex steps, the passage between stair-enclosure and two huge
ventilation pipes must be negotiated to reach the last flight of the
Tower's stair: up to L8 - the upper floor of the apt and the top level
of the Tower.

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L): ENTRY SPACE
(pic 9-94
/ to NNE)

A
print of a pointing hand directs visitors to the L8 stair.

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L): ENTRY SPACE
(pic 9-94
/ to SE)

At
the far end, in the SW corner a curtained wc and wash basin is partially
visible, on its left is a red door which opens (down a steep little stair)
into the dance studio space of Henriette's N-Attic apt [ref:],
and the wc and basin share the plumbing of her under-floor wc and bath.

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L): ENTRY SPACE & DUMP
(pic 9-94
/ to E)

...
in process

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L)
(pic 6-94
/ to NNE)

This
apt's first marvellous 'window-effect' [pic lft] is seemingly a wall-hung
mirror - in fact a hole cut in the hopper's steel side revealing the apt's entry
space. Its position, the wall's thinness, its round-cornered shape, is sufficiently unconventional as to
induce an interpretation of 'mirror' (or less specifically of 'image'),
provoking the perception (even in the photo) of the scene beyond as
more connected with its 'surface' than spatially seperate. This false
perception tends to override even the strong hint of 'window' suggested by
its positional relationship with the undoubtable window in the plank-faced
desk wall.

N-TOWER
(L7) KLAAS APT (1st L)
(pic 9-94 / to NNE)

In
the three months since the last pic the office has been partly cleared of
construction materials.

L8 is the Tower’s only level without columns interrupting its space. Mark
(the Tower's first occupant) cleared this top room of ventilation piping and sealed its roof exit-holes; laid a wood floor on the steel, leaving a balustraded
void in the NE corner that visually connects the two levels. Klaas’ huge bed is raised on storage, for a cinematic head-board he cut a window through the
thin brick wall.

N-TOWER
(L8) KLAAS APT (2nd L): NE-QUARTER VOID
(pic 6-94
/ to EES )

View over the balustrade from the upper room down to
L7.

N-TOWER
(L8) KLAAS APT (2nd L): NE-QUARTER VOID
(pic 9-94
/ to NNE )

View over the balustrade from the upper room down to
L7. At this time a hammock and writhing bedding hung in the double-height space.

Standing
back a few meters from the wall the view of the Silo Pyramid and the
New-Silo Tower come into conjunction in the window's centre like a
'sighting-hole', and as one moves the view moves in relation to this
remembered version of its whole: so 'focussed' by its possible proportional
completeness. Reinforced by its bright isolation and the window's apparently
useless functionality - that both pull it to the surface of the wall, this
image seems to have (almost certainly by chance since this is an existing
factory window) the deliberate order of a designed 'picture'. Only when one
climbs up to it and looks through and out does it resolve and recede into a
'view' [ref: next pic].